Big & Round

Famously, at the end of Planet of the Apes, Charlton Heston discovers the ruins of the Statue of Liberty and yells, “You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”

The scene wouldn’t have had quite the same power if he’d stumbled across a half-buried Unisphere. The Unisphere, a stainless steel globe 12 stories high in the middle of Flushing Meadow Park in Queens, created by U.S. Steel for the ’64 World’s Fair, might have what you’d call sub-iconic status. An also-ran in the world of monumental sculptures, something that dwells on the fringe of the familiar. You’d recognize it if you saw it, but maybe not where it was or what it was called.

Too bad. In person, it’s quite a sight up close. It loomed over me. At the same time, it seemed a little forlorn. The clouds blew over it, the wind went through it, and almost no one is there to see it. Maybe it gets more attention in the summer, when it’s the centerpiece of a fountain, and probably a pretty nice one too. By last week, the fountain was dry, and I was free to walk right up to the base of the structure, an inverted tripod. It looked like the entire 350-ton globe was held down by three extremely large bolts. I wondered what kind of force it would take to get the thing rolling, at least for a short time. Something on the order of Godzilla, no doubt.

It’s a hollow globe, and see-through as well, since it’s built of ribbons of steel that represent (more or less) latitude and longitude lines. Plates of steel, in the shapes of continents and islands, are fixed to these ribbons, and additional plates on top of the landmasses simulate, roughly, mountain ranges. The Unisphere is tilted on its axis, as the Earth is. I’ve read that it used to sport light bulbs representing national capitals, but those are long gone. Three additional stainless steel ribbons form orbits around the globe, which I understand represent the flights of Yuri Gagarin, John Glenn and Telstar, which had already gone out of service by the time the Unisphere was built.

I was three when it was new, and star of the fair. I wonder what, if anything, under construction now will give little Ann something to wonder about in her middle years.